Tuesday, March 11, 2014

WEIGHTLESS YET STRONGER: SWIMMING STUDIES

"A friend e-mails me a link to some photos he thinks I'll like. they are by George Silk, of fourteen-yea-old diver Kathy Flicker in Princeton University's Dillon Pool in March 1962. The black-and-white images have a spirit-photography quality; the water displaces Flicker's head, and refracts her body, inflating its size nightmarishly. What falls below the water's surface is free of our usual grasp of physics. The pictures achieve something rarely articulated about the metaphysical state of swimming. The body, immersed, feels amplified, heavier and lighter at the same time. Weightless yet stronger."
--Leanne Shapton, Swimming Studies

MARIA CALLAS

RING LARDNER

BETTY MacDONALD

LOUISE NEVELSON

"I feel that what people call by the word ‘scavenger’ is really a resurrection."

SVIATOSLAV RICHTER

"During one period of chronic depression, it was impossible for me to live without a plastic lobster that I took with me everywhere."

FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY

"The world will be saved by beauty."

THE BROTHERS QUAY

"It's that little glint, that privileged look into a keyhole, and realizing suddenly that there's this little universe that's probably suffering and barely breathing, but it's pulsating, vibrating, with its own life. That in itself is a metaphor of the universe."

THE KING: "MAN, I REALLY LIKE VEGAS."

Jesus statue found in Elvis's bedroom at Graceland. Photo by H. King.

HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN

"Every man's life is a fairy tale written by God's fingers."

ST. THÉRÈSE OF LISIEUX

"If you are willing to bear serenely the trial of being displeasing to yourself, then you will be for Jesus a pleasant place of shelter."

BILL MONROE

"Bluegrass has brought more people together and made more friends than any music in the world."

BILL W.

"We'll make it not because we're a better people--but because we're a weaker people."

BILL HICKS

"By the way, if anyone here is in marketing or advertising...kill yourself. Thank you."